4 ms·

He missed an important piece - it all functions because the Reward circuitry in peoples brains are feeding off of Likes/Clicks/View/Upvote counts etc etc. Take

by op03 6y ago

He missed an important piece - it all functions because the Reward circuitry in peoples brains are feeding off of Likes/Clicks/View/Upvote counts etc etc. Take the dumb counts away. Hide them. Delay them etc etc and all of a sudden pavlovs dog or skinners rat starts behaving differently. People act as if this dumb half baked reward system solely existing to increase "engagement" underlying everything is now unchangeable and baked into the fabric of everything for ever and always. They are wrong.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
There are market forces behind the engagement cult, so - unfortunately - they're probably not wrong while those forces continue to operate. The root of that problem is the use of the web as a device for capturing time and attention and selling that attention to third parties. As long as that continues to be the prime directive, the race to the bottom will continue.
joe_the_user 6y ago
There are quite possibly better ways to run reactions than the way current social media does it. However, I think it's easy to miss the important role/use that these devices play. The article "the silence is deafening" just the other day noted how non-verbal cues in conversation and I'd add that social media reactions and similar devices allows people to be "loosely engaged" with each other in the way that who attend the same event without exchanging words are loosely connected. And these kinds of perfunctory attachments are important (as COVID also shows). These kinds of attachment were also manipulated even before the Internet, with store clerks instructed to say "have a nice day" and such even in the 1970s. Which is to say, likes, memes and emoticons may seem kinda silly and annoying from one perspective but they're a way to emulate "the stuff of life" and we need to think about how to do that better.

by op03 6y ago

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

There are market forces behind the engagement cult, so - unfortunately - they're probably not wrong while those forces continue to operate. The root of that problem is the use of the web as a device for capturing time and attention and selling that attention to third parties. As long as that continues to be the prime directive, the race to the bottom will continue.

joe_the_user 6y ago

There are quite possibly better ways to run reactions than the way current social media does it. However, I think it's easy to miss the important role/use that these devices play. The article "the silence is deafening" just the other day noted how non-verbal cues in conversation and I'd add that social media reactions and similar devices allows people to be "loosely engaged" with each other in the way that who attend the same event without exchanging words are loosely connected. And these kinds of perfunctory attachments are important (as COVID also shows). These kinds of attachment were also manipulated even before the Internet, with store clerks instructed to say "have a nice day" and such even in the 1970s. Which is to say, likes, memes and emoticons may seem kinda silly and annoying from one perspective but they're a way to emulate "the stuff of life" and we need to think about how to do that better.